Hi All,

I'm asking on behalf of my mum who is 74 and being threatened with a £120 fine by Hackney Council. Unfortunately I only have some of the documentation. What I know is:

23/6/2016 An enforcement officer snapped a photo of a silver VW Golf in London Fields with her number plate.
28/7/2016 My mum received a PCN by post stating the above.
29/7/2016 We look up the photos on their website and see that the car has the same number plate, but is not a red Mercedes A class. One of the photos shows the tax disc on the vehicle, which clearly shows the real registration number of the vehicle. I used Hackney's online system to make a representation for her, assuming that pointing out the discrepancy on the tax disc and with the DVLA registration would be enough (I didn't include a scan of the V5C because I assumed they could look up the registration with the DVLA themselves and might do this as a matter of course). I should have reported the issue to the police but assumed that as more than a month had elapsed, the car would almost certainly have been impounded and reported to the police by then anyway.
Here's the text of the representation, and a follow up that I added minutes later when I noticed the tax disc discrepancy:
--- Representation 1
My car, registration number <hidden> is a red Mercedes A Class (as you can confirm with the DVLA). As can clearly be seen in the photo, the illegally parked car is a silver Volkswagen, thus I suspect my number plate has been cloned without my knowledge and is being used by criminals.
--- Representation 2
Further to my previous representation, I see the registration number on the tax disc is "<hidden>".
---

My mum says that a few days later she then received a pink form by post that she filled in with a similar explanation and posted back to them. I didn't see the form, so have no idea what it said.
5/9/2016 She receives another letter from Hackney stating:
---- Letter from Hackney
"We have carefully considered what you have said including any mitigating circumstances you have described, but we have decided not to cancel your Penalty Charge Notice.

I have looked into your case and read the previous letters (yours to us and ours to you). I can see that you are raising a point that we answered in our previous letter. Although I understand that you feel strongly about this point, I do not have anything new to add to the answer we gave in our previous letter"
----

Note that my mum says that there was no covering letter with the "pink form" so I am not aware of any correspondence in which Hackney state why they rejected the representation. The letter appears to have been sent in response to the pink form.

15/9/2016 We now have a green letter stating that:
---- Letter from Hackney
"This charge certificate has been served because the penalty charge has not been paid.

The council has sent this charge certificate to you because it believes that one of the following applies:
1) No representations were made in response to the notice to owner
2) Representations were made and we issued a notice of rejection but no appeal against the notice of rejection was made to the Independent Adjudicator
3) An appeal was made to the Independent Adjudicator but was either rejected or withdrawn.

As a result, the penalty charge has now increased by 50% to £120"
----

The cloned number plate has been reported to the police who issued a crime reference number. I can send Hackney a scanned copy of the V5C to prove that the car in the photos is the wrong make, wrong model and wrong colour. However, they don't accept representations by email, and the online system now only allows paying the PCN.

Does she just have to pay? This seems extremely unfair and I wish I knew what this "pink form" in the middle of the correspondence said.
I tried going to the Environment and Traffic Adjudicator website but they need a Verification Code that apparently would have been on the Notice of Rejection that I haven't seen and may never have been received.

Any help gratefully received!

Lets see the documents that you have, get round to Mum if needed and put together what you can.

Postal PCN.
Representations
Notice of Rejection
Which should have had appeal form to London Tribunals
Charge Certificate.

There should not have been a second form to challenge (pink) so I suspect this may have been the appeal form to LT.
But see what you can do to confirm so we can point out the right procedure.

We really do need to see documents in this sort of case. DD above lists those your mum should have received. For a start, the PCN was received by post;we need to know why.What was the contravention ? An appeal was made but the result is very unclear from your post. After a rejection response, the appellant has a certain number of days to pay-up or appeal to London Tribunals. What happened ?

A Charge Certificate is issued and cannot be appealed.Your mum will have to wait for the Order for Recovery from the TEC, Northampton, at which point a witness statement can be submitted, but only a few grounds, these essentially being not receiving certain documents.

At the moment, it looks very strongly as if your mother has failed to do anything after receiving a rejection of reps letter. It might be prudent, at some point, to involve your local councillor as the council do seem to have made a Pig's Ear of things, but until we see the documents this is only conjecture.

You cant appeal now.

The next step is to file an official complaint with Hackney.


http://www.hackney.gov.uk/complaints


I would pay the £120 to ensure bailiffs do not come knocking, you can always get a refund later.

Thanks DancingDad and Incandescent,

Unfortunately I only have two of the documents. I saw the original PCN and have the letter of the 5th September and the Charge Certificate. I didn't ever see the pink form or the notice of rejection, and apart from the two documents I have, she says she doesn't have the other documents (partly because this form she received was posted back to them, possibly in error, it sounds like this was meant to go to the independent adjudicator.) and possibly because the Notice of Rejection never arrived (is it possible that the Notice of Rejection was the pink form she received?)

She gets quite stressed every time we talk about it, so I don't think there's any possibility of finding out more than the documents I've scanned below. I just can't understand how "It's not my car, look it's the wrong make and model" is not sufficient evidence for the council to cancel the ticket. I might try a councillor, but I forgot to mention, she doesn't even live in Hackney, she lives in Hounslow, the other side of London. So do I choose a councillor at random? Or is it worth trying the CEO of Hackney?

Scans attached. Thanks again!

I feel quite annoyed about this, as door to door conmen know, it's easy to rip of confused old ladies. I just expect better of people in local government.

Okay.

Given what we have, I can see two options for course of action.

One is to do as J Hickinbottom says, pay and then raise a formal complaint with council and be prepared to follow this all the way to Local Government Ombudsman.... full refund should be achievable given what you have said. I'd also be asking for compensation as the original representations were dealt with by an incompetent.

Second, is to go with wait for the Order for Recovery.
This will include a witness statement that can be signed and sent to TEC (Not Council) address on form.
Mum (registered keeper) must sign it.
One of two possible grounds, made reps against NTO/PCN but no reply or Appealed to adjudicator but no decision/nothing heard.

Given the pink form, I suspect the latter is the right one.

No reason why both options cannot be taken but do not pay if going with both, the OFR route will stop further enforcement and cancel the CC.

For a complaint.
Photos of your car.
Copy of V5 showing make colour
Council photos showing contravening car
Enhanced of tax disc (lucky one was on there)
Police Crime reference
Simple statement along lines of totally unhappy with the way the PCN has been considered. This is the evidence but has been totally ignored and seems that the appeal to LT has gone adrift.
As it is obvious that absolutely no consideration whatsoever, old lady being penalised and stressed, can this be stopped now and the PCN cancelled as even a cursory look by anyone with some common sense shows it is totally unjust.

Thanks for the advice again DancingDad (and J Hinckinbotom)

I've sent a complaint via the Hackney Complaints Form on their website, but I'm not hopeful.

I might suggest she continues along the "pay, then complain" route.

Thanks very much for the assistance.

Enter your mother's reg no. here:

https://ownvehicle.askmid.com

Post what it says e.g. polka dot Ford.

Tell us what car the authority are chasing.

Hi hcanderson,

Mum's car comes up as:
MERCEDES-BENZA 140 CLASSIC SE

The illegally parked car is a silver VW Passat

Thanks.

I live in Hackney if I can help and am a member of the ruling Labour party. I have to say the parking people are normally quite good about issues like this - I think they just didn't read your letter and it's a computer response. I would phone them - they should be there up to 1pm today - and clarify what they are rejecting as their letter is devoid of detail.

I would be sending a PM to Stamfordman. Councillors cannot become involved in the decision making process, but the can ask that the parking manager to review if the council policies or the law do not seem to have been applied correctly
this includes the councils common and public law duty to act fairly at all times

He didn't say he was a councilor though!

No I'm not a councillor but I can contact one saying something like 'a colleague of mine's mum' etc... and hopefully escalating it. But the OP should try calling and asking to speak to a manager as I do think this is a cock up not a conspiracy.

This is the cabinet member in charge of parking - she's in the next ward to me:

http://mginternet.hackney.gov.uk/mgUserInfo.aspx?UID=115

Thanks everyone for all the amazing offers of help.

stamfordman - I didn't realise they were open on Saturdays, makes speaking to them a lot easier. The contact centre person was surprised that the person reviewing the case hadn't checked the DVLA record and noticed that the make and model of the car were wrong. She gave me the phone number of London Tribunals who said they could investigate the case even though it was outside the 28 day response time because of the circumstances. So I'll send them a letter and hope for the best, and if nothing is forthcoming that route, will wait for the order of recovery.

Thanks again for all the kind offers of help!

Just a bit of tidying up cos the slightest bit of wrong terminology will confuse
the Council, or others, further and delay matters.

You cannot have received a postal PCN for that contravention.
It can only have been a Notice to Owner.

Same effect but terminology can be important.

I read it as a drive away postal PCN.
But you may be right.

Oh, yes could be.
Didn't think of that.

Not sure of the specific terminology, but they affixed a ticket to the car, but obviously as my mum wasn't in London Fields and it wasn't her car, she never saw it. The thing that arrived in the post would have been the reminder, maybe? Funnily enough, I don't remember it acknowledging that the initial half-price fine had expired (which is when I presume they'd send the first postal communication?)

You're getting off the subject.

Write to the authority as follows:
1. A letter signed by your mother authorising you to act on her behalf in this matter.
2. A letter as follows addressed to the Head of Parking Services

Dear Sir,
Re: PCN **********

I refer to the above and the various notices sent by the authority to my mother who, as the enclosed makes clear, has authorised me to act on her behalf as she gets rather flummoxed by such matters.

The authority have made a serious mistake and I hope that this letter can resolve matters before they escalate out of control and bring the council into disrepute.

On *** the authority issued a PCN to to silver Golf VRM ******. Subsequently they obtained the details of the registered keeper of that number but failed to notice that the vehicle to which it had been allocated by DVLA was a red Mercedes, since when the authority have been pursuing the owner of a red Mercedes for a contravention which the authority's photographic evidence clearly shows was committed by a silver VW Golf. I have to confess at being surprised that the authority did not notice their error on two separate occasions: the first when they received the details from DVLA(it is common practice to check the vehicle description given by DVLA with that on the PCN) and secondly when the NTO was issued which stated red Mercedes (OP, you can check this part by looking at the NTO).

Irrespective of parking regulations, the council have a duty to act fairly and pursuing someone who has no connection with or liability for the events fails that test by miles.

I'm not interested in how this came about, I am only interested in the authority and council ceasing to harass my mother.

I should be graeful if you would respond directly to her notifying her that she no longer has any liability in this matter, an apology would also not go amiss.

Yours faithfully,

Thanks again for the advice, all, and for the text of a letter, hcanderson.

I sent a complaint to the general Customer Services complaint address over the weekend, and had just finished writing a letter to London Tribunals (another half hour wasted) when I got a call from Hackney to say that they had cancelled the PCN. I was relieved but also got really angry again when I mentioned to the representative all the opportunities they missed to do the right thing. I counted four separate occasions where Hackney staff had sufficient evidence in front of them to see that there was something fishy about the registration number but each occasion was missed. They acknowledged in their written notice of cancellation that many mistakes had been made.

I am now pushing for compensation for all the time I have spent digging out documents, travelling to my mum's, scanning things, posting here, etc, and for my mum for nearly losing £120 through no fault of her own because of the fear of bailiffs turning up at her house left her inclined to just pay.

Thanks so much for all the time you have spent on the case here. I work in IT, and if I can repay the favour with any technical advice on your home computing/networking/broadband issues, let me know ;-) (I already volunteer with Abilitynet helping elderly and disabled people get the most from their computers)

Nice one.

Knowing Hackney as I do it's not malicious on their side - probably just untrained junior staff. No excuse but I would not demand compensation but just itemise what you've done and see if they offer you something.

I would also ask if procedures are being put in place to stop this from happening again.

Well done ! As for Hackney, the staff involved in this affair should be cast into outer darkness

Not malicious, but incompetent, neglectful of their duty and the tone of at least one of their letters was really dismissive and patronising.


Nope, hours of my time because someone their end couldn't spend one minute reading the DVLA details. There's no way I'm getting that time back, the least they can do is pay me for it.


They did say that they have raised the issue with management to raise awareness of numberplate cloning. I wonder what their procedures are where a number plate is cloned and affixed to a car that is the same make model and colour as the one registered with the DVLA?

Thanks for your offer of help in the thread above.